All the stats you never wanted to know about each conference; SEC not clearly the strongest conference, Big-Televen only #4 conference

There has been a lot of debate lately about schedule strengths and if a non-AQ conference team deserves to be considered for a BCS bowl game.  In light of that, here are a bunch of status and ratings for all the conferences, many of which you probably never knew you cared about but now do.

Note some of this was triggered by seeing @DufresneLATimes retweet @socalspud saying the SEC has no road wins over BCS teams.  I'm not sure that's true (see below), but do follow me on Twitter as @computerratings to see other snippets of information and data like this analysis.

First, here is the average, high, and low rating for each conference using my computer's latest ratings.

Rank	Conference	Average	High	Low
1	Pac-10	76.473	91.224	65.286
2	SEC	73.962	82.811	59.807
3	Big-12	72.900	80.599	59.948
4	Big-Televen	70.186	81.820	59.281
5	ACC	68.736	79.030	57.141
6	Independent	68.372	72.695	63.198
7	Big-East	66.257	72.975	60.017
8	WAC	65.155	85.909	47.955
9	Mountain-West	64.565	84.681	47.408
10	C-USA	60.459	69.780	47.824
11	MAC	58.095	71.087	45.308
12	Sun-Belt	53.582	60.101	48.552

This goes against the conventional wisdom that the SEC is the strongest conference with the Pac-10 being a 2.5 point #1.  The SEC is followed closely by the Big-12 and there is a bit of a gap back to the Big-Televen.  Clearly, the Big-East is down this year finding themselves just ahead of the WAC and Mountain West.  It is interesting that Boise is moving to the Mountain West next year but right now the WAC has a higher average.

Now, this is skewed a bit by Oregon having such a high rating so if we throw out the high and low from each conference we get:

Rank	Conference	Average	High	Low
1	Pac-10	76.027	86.209	69.737
2	SEC	74.493	82.618	64.074
3	Big-12	73.425	80.578	67.830
4	Big-Televen	70.105	79.863	60.113
5	Independent	69.224	69.224	69.224
6	ACC	68.866	75.474	60.996
7	Big-East	66.177	71.499	64.682
8	WAC	64.648	76.696	52.446
9	Mountain-West	64.142	73.704	55.457
10	C-USA	60.790	68.432	54.223
11	MAC	58.077	66.610	49.563
12	Sun-Belt	53.370	57.220	50.660

The gap from #1 to #2 is a bit smaller, but still over 1.5 points, so this seems to say the Pac-10 is indeed the toughest conference.

Another way to look at it though is to look at just games a conference plays against non-conference opponents.  Treating each conference as a single team in my algorithm, this results in:

Rank	Conference	Average	Record	Schedule
1	SEC	73.253	39-5-0	58.260
2	Pac-10	70.864	21-9-0	63.054
3	Big-12	70.088	38-8-0	60.638
4	Big-Televen	68.660	35-8-0	58.950
5	Independent	67.330	18-11-0	62.271
6	ACC	67.124	27-15-0	60.288
7	Big-East	66.894	23-15-0	60.950
8	WAC	65.086	21-17-0	63.218
9	Mountain-West	63.705	17-19-0	65.050
10	C-USA	61.719	20-27-0	64.725
11	MAC	59.043	15-37-0	64.805
12	Sun-Belt	56.225	4-31-0	68.467
13	FCS	52.390	7-83-0	69.713

The SEC, Pac-10, Big-12, and Big-Televen are again the top-four, but the SEC has moved ahead of the Pac-10 looking at it this way.  Their non-conference record is better (39-5 vs 21-9) but it is against a much weaker schedule.  This is likely explained by the SEC playing only 8 conference games, leaving 4 non-conference games for each of the 12 teams vs the Pac-10 playing 9 conference games and only 3 non-conference for each of the 10 teams.  The SEC usually uses the fourth non-conference game to play a very weak opponent dragging their schedule strength down.

But the Big-Televen also plays 8 conference games leaving 4 non-conference and similarly has a weak schedule but not as weak as the SEC's.  The Big-12 does the same but manages to have a stronger schedule than the SEC or Big-Televen.

If we take a deeper look at the non-conference schedules we see some interesting items in comparing the Pac-10 and SEC:

• The Pac-10 played 7 FCS schools, the SEC 11, in both cases all at the Pac-10/SEC school.
• The SEC lost against an FCS school (Jacksonville State at Ole Miss 49-48) and the Pac-10 had one close call against an FCS school (Montana St at WSU 22-23)
• The Pac-10 and SEC played head to head in one game where Oregon walloped Tennessee in Tennessee 48-13
• Of the Pac-10's other 23 non-conference games, 13 (57%) were against AQ conference schools, 6 on the road, going 3-3 on the road and 6-1 at home, for a total record of 9-4.
• Of the SEC's other 33 non-conference games, only 12 (36%) were against AQ conference schools, 4 on the road, 2 at a neutral site, going 2-2 on the road, 2-0 neutral, and 4-2 at home, for a total record of 8-4.

So, these are very similar profiles, the head to head win not being a big factor as it was the best Pac-10 team against a lower tier SEC team.  The knock against the SEC though is that they pad their schedule with an extra weak non-conference opponent while the Pac-10 plays an extra conference game, on average the Pac-10 opponent being stronger than the extra SEC non-conference opponent.

In any case, the perception that the SEC has the strongest schedule is clearly not an open and shut case, in fact one could argue the Pac-10's schedule is tougher.  And all the noise coming from the Big-Televen seems completely unfounded as they aren't even that close a #4 to the top-three conferences.

Thoughts or questions on the subject?  Leave a comment or message me on Twitter.